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Dessert

Ginger Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, raisins, ginger, salt, soda, milk, egg, and golden syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Ginger Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the shredded suet with the bread crumbs.

  2. Add the raisins, ground ginger, and coarse sea salt.

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve the carbonate of soda in the milk and mix it with the other ingredients.

  2. Add the Golden Syrup last and beat the mixture well.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered basin covered with greased paper.

  2. Boil the pudding fairly fast for two hours.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Raisin + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Ginger + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together950 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the acidic syrup to release gas, helping the pudding rise and lighten.
Shredded suet
Adds fat that enriches the pudding and keeps it moist and tender as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Provide body and absorb liquid, giving the pudding a soft, cake-like structure.
Golden syrup
Adds sweetness and moisture, and its acidity helps the soda react.
Milk
Hydrates the crumbs and carries the soda through the batter.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Dissolve the carbonate of soda in the milk before mixing. Soda must be fully dissolved and evenly distributed so it reacts uniformly with the syrup. Unevenly mixed soda can leave bitter patches and uneven rising.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, raisin, milk, egg, syrup):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Clovefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, raisin, milk, egg, syrup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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